Bipartisan Bill Aims to Deport Kids Quickly

posted by Caitlin Dickson
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2 years ago

Republican Sen. John Cornyn and Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar, both of Texas, introduced a bipartisan bill Tuesday that aims to quell the current border crisis by making it possible to send young, Central American migrants back to their home countries more quickly. To accomplish this, the Helping Unaccompanied Minors and Alleviating National Emergency (HUMANE) Act proposes changes to a law signed by George W. Bush in 2008 that treats unaccompanied child migrants from Mexico and Canada differently than it does those from countries not directly bordering the U.S.

Included in the 2008 William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act is a provision requiring that all undocumented kids from noncontiguous countries be transferred into the custody of the Health and Human Services Department no more than 72 hours after being apprehended at the border. Prior to 2008, all kids who crossed the border on their own were processed by the Department of Homeland Security, the umbrella agency that includes U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The concern, at the time TVPRA was passed, was that DHS’s standard processing procedure was not equipped to ensure that kids with legitimate asylum claims weren’t being sent directly back into the dangerous situations they may have been fleeing.

Many point to this provision—which intentionally slowed down the deportation process for unaccompanied minors—as one of the root causes of today’s crisis, which is expected to result in 90,000 children crossing the border alone this year.

To combat the unintended consequences of the TVPRA’s rules on unaccompanied minors, Cuellar and Cornyn’s bill proposes a change to the 2008 law, “treating all unaccompanied migrant children crossing our border with equality under the law, and allowing for voluntary reunification with family, whether they are from Mexico, Central America, or any other country.” The bipartisan bill also requires that kids who have asylum claims, parents living in the U.S., or other arguments as to why they should be allowed to stay in the country legally, be able to make their case to an immigration judge within a week of entering HHS custody, and would require immigration judges to make a ruling on a child’s status within 72 hours of hearing their claim.

Last week, President Obama asked Congress for $3.7 billion in emergency funds for his administration’s response to the unprecedented flow of families and children across the Southwest border. On a call with members of the media, White House officials noted that part of the White House’s strategy for handling the border crisis included plans to work with Congress to make changes to the law with regards unaccompanied children from non-contiguous countries—changes similar to those proposed by Cornyn and Cuellar Tuesday.

CNN noted Tuesday that the HUMANE Act currently has no Democratic sponsors in the Senate, but it does have a few influential Democratic detractors. Last week, ahead of the bill’s official introduction last week, Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin, of Illinois, said he would only support changing the 2008 law if it meant children were required to have legal representation at immigration hearings and if the U.S. were required to have assurances about the “social infrastructure” of the countries to which these kids would be returned.